# Small parts storage for a garage: bins, drawers and what goes in which

_Published by CAVE4MAN (https://cave4man.com) — storage, workshop and man-cave kit for UK home garages. The shop has not opened yet; nothing here can be ordered today._

_Updated 2026-09-19 · 8 min read_

**The short answer**

Store small parts in a garage by quantity, not by type. Anything you buy by the hundred goes in a tilt bin on the wall; anything you own a dozen of goes in a clear divided drawer; anything you cannot name goes in one box. Sort by size within each category and keep steel fixings off a damp floor.

**In this guide**

1. [The tin of mixed screws is the problem, not the solution](https://cave4man.com/guides/small-parts-storage-garage#the-tin-of-mixed-screws-is-the-problem-not-the-solution)
2. [Bins for the hundreds, drawers for the dozens](https://cave4man.com/guides/small-parts-storage-garage#bins-for-the-hundreds-drawers-for-the-dozens)
3. [Sort by what you would look for](https://cave4man.com/guides/small-parts-storage-garage#sort-by-what-you-would-look-for)
4. [What a bin is for, and what it is not](https://cave4man.com/guides/small-parts-storage-garage#what-a-bin-is-for-and-what-it-is-not)
5. [Damp, rust and the concrete floor](https://cave4man.com/guides/small-parts-storage-garage#damp-rust-and-the-concrete-floor)
6. [Where the bins go on the wall](https://cave4man.com/guides/small-parts-storage-garage#where-the-bins-go-on-the-wall)

## The tin of mixed screws is the problem, not the solution

Every garage has one: a biscuit tin, an old ice cream tub, a jar, full of every fixing that ever came out of a packet. It feels like storage. It is a place where fixings go to be lost, because the cost of finding one specific screw in it is a full tip-out onto the bench, and the cost of putting a screw back is nothing, which is exactly the wrong way round. So the tin only ever fills.

Small parts are the hardest thing in a garage to store well because they are small, numerous, nearly identical, and worthless individually. Nobody drives to a shop for one washer, so the washer has to be findable, or it is not worth owning. That means a home per size, not a home per category, and it means the home has to be one you can see into.

The fix is not a bigger tin. It is splitting the problem by quantity: things you own hundreds of, things you own a few dozen of, and things you own one or two of. Each of those wants a different container, and once they are separated the tin stops being necessary. What is left in it after that is what you should have thrown away.


## Bins for the hundreds, drawers for the dozens

A tilt bin — the open-fronted plastic tray that clips onto a louvred wall panel — is built for the things you buy in bulk and use a handful at a time. Wood screws by length, wall plugs by colour, washers, nuts, cable clips. You grab a fistful, take what you need, and drop the rest back into the same bin without looking. That put-away is what makes it work. A thirty-bin wall rack sorts what used to be a drawer; a forty-eight-bin panel sorts what used to be a shelf of half-empty boxes.

A drawer cabinet — the small unit of a couple of dozen clear plastic drawers — is for the tier below. Spade terminals, grub screws, o-rings, roll pins, the odd bit of brass. These are things you own a dozen of, small enough to vanish in a bin, and you find them by looking rather than by grabbing. Clear fronts matter more than they sound: you identify a drawer by seeing into it, not by remembering what you wrote on it eighteen months ago. A divider in each lets one drawer hold two or three sizes without mixing them.

| Kind of part | How many you own | Home | Why it works |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Screws, plugs, washers, nuts | Hundreds | Tilt bin on a wall panel | Grab a handful, drop the rest straight back |
| Terminals, o-rings, grub screws | Dozens | Clear divided drawer | Small enough to vanish in a bin |
| Drill bits and driver bits | A set | The index they came in, in a drawer | Size order is the whole point |
| Odd brackets and spare parts | A few | One lidded box, emptied now and then | Stops them colonising a shelf |
| Fixings for one project | A bag | With the project, not in the system | Not worth a bin for a fortnight |


## Sort by what you would look for

Within a category, sort by the one thing you would actually search for. For screws that is length, then head type. For plugs it is size, which on the common ranges is also colour. For washers it is the bolt size they fit. Do not sort by where the fixings came from or what project they were for; that is a memory test, and you will fail it in six months.

Keep the order consistent across every container. If bins run small to large left to right on the top row, they run small to large on every row. If drawers go by size top to bottom, the next cabinet does too. The point is that you stop reading labels and start reaching for a position. A system with one ordering rule can be used in the dark; a system with three cannot be used at all.

Empty the packet into the bin and throw the packet away. Half the mess in a small-parts system is cardboard boxes, opened at one end, sitting in front of the bin that was meant to replace them. The exception is a fixing whose packet carries information you will need again, such as the drill size for a specialist anchor. Cut that panel out and drop it in the bin with the fixings.


## What a bin is for, and what it is not

Tilt bins are not for tools, and they are not for anything you own one of. A single spare fuse in a bin the size of your hand is a wasted bin, and a screwdriver laid across three of them is a screwdriver you have lost. Keep them to genuinely bulk consumables, and if a category shrinks below a handful, move it down to a drawer and give the bin to something else.

They are also not a filing system for projects. The set of bolts for the trailer, the fixings for the shelves you have not put up yet, the kit for the bike — those belong together, with the project, in a bag or a box, until the project is done. Splitting them into the system means reassembling them later from memory, and the whole reason the project stalled was that one bolt could not be found.


## Damp, rust and the concrete floor

An unheated British garage sweats on the inside every time a mild damp day follows a cold night. Warm moist air condenses on cold surfaces, and a bin full of bright steel screws against a single-skin wall is a cold surface. Zinc-plated and stainless fixings shrug it off; plain steel and black-phosphate screws will show surface rust by the second winter. That is not a reason to give up, it is a reason to think about where the bins go.

Keep small-parts storage off the floor and away from the outside wall where you can. Wall-hung bins already do that. A drawer cabinet on the bench or on a wall is fine; the same cabinet left on the slab under the bench is sitting in the coldest, dampest air in the building. Lidded boxes for anything you will not touch for months, and a moisture-absorbing sachet dropped in with the bare steel, cost almost nothing and buy a lot of time.


## Where the bins go on the wall

Mount a bin rack where a car door cannot reach it, and leave a clear space in front of it. The bins tilt forward to open and lift out to carry, so a rack squeezed into a gap you have to turn sideways for is a rack you stop using. Bench height to eye level is the sweet spot: below that you are bending to read them, above it you cannot see in.

A loaded rack is far heavier than an empty one looks, and the whole weight hangs off the top of the panel. Fix it into masonry with proper frame fixings, or into studs. The panels and hooks come with the rack; the wall fixings usually do not, and the right ones depend on what the wall is made of. Read the product page before the drill comes out — a rack that pulls off a plasterboard wall drops several hundred screws into the one place you did not want them.

## Common questions

**What is the best way to store screws and nails in a garage?**

In tilt bins on a wall-mounted louvred panel, one bin per size. You grab a handful, use what you need and drop the rest straight back, which is the put-away that keeps the system working. Sort by length, keep the order consistent across every row, and throw the cardboard packets away once the bin is filled.

**Should I use bins or drawers for small parts?**

Both, split by quantity. Bins suit the things you own hundreds of and use a fistful at a time: screws, plugs, washers. Clear drawers suit the things you own a dozen of and find by looking: terminals, o-rings, grub screws, bits. A part that is small enough to vanish in a bin belongs in a drawer.

**How do I stop screws rusting in the garage?**

Keep them off the floor, away from the cold outside wall, and closed up when they are not in use. Winter condensation in an unheated garage forms on cold surfaces, and bright steel against a single-skin wall is one. Plated and stainless fixings cope; plain steel wants a lidded container and a moisture-absorbing sachet.

**How should I organise a parts bin rack?**

Decide the order before you fill it, because every bin looks identical from a distance. Run small to large in one direction on every row, group by category across rows, and leave a few empty bins at the end for whatever comes next. Label the lip of each bin with the category, not a list of contents.

## Kit that does the job

- **30-bin wall parts rack** — £89.99, not yet on sale (https://cave4man.com/product/wall-parts-bin-rack)
- **48-bin parts wall, panels and hooks** — £109.00, not yet on sale (https://cave4man.com/product/parts-bin-panel-kit)
- **25-drawer parts cabinet** — £49.99, not yet on sale (https://cave4man.com/product/parts-drawer-cabinet-25)

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Guide page: https://cave4man.com/guides/small-parts-storage-garage